City: Auckland | Tāmaki Makaurau

Te Arikinui Pullman Auckland Airport Hotel is a 5-star hotel investment by Auckland Airport and Tainui Group Holdings to meet growing global demands for accommodation within walking distance of both domestic and international airport terminals. Located at the gateway to New Zealand, the 10-storey building features 311 luxury guestrooms spread over the upper nine levels, as well as various engaging environments that reflect local culture and provide guests with a personalised and authentic experience, such as the informal lobby hub, roof-level bar, and a restaurant featuring a selection of New Zealand’s finest cuisine.

Local Māori architectural designs feature throughout the hotel, which were developed in close collaboration with Tainui. The exquisite designs provide a unique and lasting experience for visitors.

Working with Warren and Mahoney architects, AECOM was engaged by the joint venture client to provide structural and civil engineering design and construction observation services for the hotel building.

The building design includes many complex structural engineering features, including:

• Long span transfer structures and mega columns at the ground floor level. This provides large column free areas for ground level facilities.
• Feature cladding to the underside of the building. This required a complex support structure and extensive collaboration between architectural and structural teams to resolve design.
• Innovative structural solutions to address the complex building footprint and to ensure integration with architecture and building services.
• Buckling-restraint bracing system to provide improved resilience through a seismic event.
• Complex building foundation design due to challenging ground conditions and complex soil/structure interaction challenges.
• Construction stage analysis to determine potential instability issues during the construction. This was deemed necessary for the project due to the complex transfer structural arrangement through the lower levels of the building.

AECOM’s global experience in modular construction enabled AECOM to work with the client early in the project to evaluate several modular construction options.

The $1.2B Central Interceptor (CI), a wastewater tunnel, will provide resilience to the current wastewater pipeline under the Manukau Harbour, as well as help Auckland manage the needs of a growing city and improve environmental outcomes. The project provides additional stormwater capacity and connectivity for future wastewater projects, allowing for increased capacity and network growth.

CI is designed to work entirely by gravity flows from Grey Lynn to Māngere Wastewater Treatment Plant (MWTP) some 14.7 km away. On route, link sewers, access points and drop shafts collect and transfer storm / wastewater into the tunnel. The design incorporates various gates that attenuate flows thus providing a controlled discharge to MWTP. In addition, CI’s design provided the most effective route to MWTP.

At 14.7 km long, CI will be the longest bored tunnel in New Zealand. CI’s depth varies between 15 and 110 metres from the surface, crossing the Manukau harbour at depths of about 15m below the seabed. With a capacity of 210,000 m³, CI will be connected to two link sewer tunnels as well as 17 above ground sites.

Māngere Wastewater Treatment Plant

Role and Services Provided

AECOM, working alongside McMillian Jacobs Associates as subconsultants to Jacobs as lead designer, started the design of CI in 2014. Ghella Abergeldie Joint Venture (GAJV) was appointed in early 2019 as the Main Contractor by Watercare. Along with their design partners, AECOM continues to provide design services to the GAJV team and will continue to do so until fully operational in 2026. Our services include a range of design management disciplines.

Outcomes and Values

The project’s success is founded in a “one team” philosophy supporting a “best for project” mentality in resourcing, problem solving and decision making. This includes relationship building and close partnering to achieve Client needs. Because of the project’s long direction and changes in personnel, the use of shared technology such as Watercare’s Aconex system has enabled transfer on knowledge and documents to be well maintained. Communication using ProjectWise since inception for shared document management and submission to Client has also been effective during this long timeframe.

To further ramp up capability and capacity to cover resource shortfalls when required, key water personnel from major transport projects were actively demobilised (back-filling them from our flexible pool) to ensure Central Interceptor was on track to meet programme deadlines.

HomeGround – Built to uplift Auckland’s most vulnerable

In 2022, the Auckland City Mission – Te Tāpui Atawhai turned what was once a dream into reality. This dream was HomeGround, an 11-storey building featuring 80 apartments and wraparound health and social services. With HomeGround, the mission can support thousands of people to access housing, food, and healthcare in one building. HomeGround goes beyond necessities as the building is meticulously planned to provide occupants with a sense of dignity, a community and positive environment, safety, and mental and physical wellbeing. International research has shown that integrated social housing programmes of this nature equate to approximately $13,000 in public savings per person per annum. AECOM is proud and honoured to have helped the mission deliver this critical infrastructure.

Delivering accessible health and wellbeing for all

HomeGround was designed based on two principles: trauma-informed and Te Aranga (Māori design) principles. Trauma-informed principles encourage the designs to maximise natural light, space and incorporate earthy tones, while Te Aranga principles honour Te Ao Māori – a process guided by Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei.

Making health affordable and accessible is at the heart of HomeGround. The state-of-the-art Calder Health Centre can care for thousands of people yearly and has a range of health-related services, including low-cost health and onsite social workers. A great success in delivering HomeGround is the managed withdrawal services housed on levels two and three. The social withdrawal service on level three, run 24/7 by the Mission, caters towards people needing care in recovery from alcohol and other drug use but not hospital-grade intervention. Te Whatu Ora runs level two and has 24/7 support from health and medical professionals to help people withdraw safely.

Maintaining occupant privacy and safety was at the fore of design decisions. The spaces have been designed and equipped with increased safety and anti-ligature features to support managed withdrawal services. In the event of an emergency, a lift connecting the managed withdrawal floors to the basement enables discrete transportation to the hospital via ambulance.

Built by, for, and with Aucklanders

The iconic HomeGround is truly an Auckland landmark built by, for, and with Aucklanders. The programme of work was leveraged to achieve equitable outcomes for vulnerable populations. This was achieved with an accreditation and membership in Mates in Construction – a suicide prevention programme – and provisions for learning and development, youth worker programmes, and resident apprenticeships.

The HomeGround facility recognises the importance of social connections and fosters an inclusive environment where individuals feel a sense of belonging. Each day, HomeGround serves up to 300 hot and nutritious meals through its community dining room Haeata.

HomeGround also has several communal spaces, vital for engaging the community and tenants in life-enriching activities and workshops to relearn or learn new skills. Encouraging participation in these activities, fosters a sense of belonging, develops valuable skills, rebuilds confidence, and establishes strong networks for life.

New Zealand’s first large-scale high-rise cross-laminated timber (CLT) building

Not only a significant social milestone, HomeGround is also a landmark facility being New Zealand’s first large-scale high-rise CLT building. CLT represents an innovative approach that reduces costs, labour time, improves earthquake performance, and minimises carbon emissions. AECOM, as the structural engineer, helped design a concrete podium structure on the basement ground and first floor to support the CLT main structure, while an exterior cross-brace provides lateral stability.

Other sustainable features include edible rooftop gardens, sort-at-source waste management, harvesting of rainwater, use of prefinished and prefabricated products to reduce waste and construction time, and maximising energy efficiency through the use of passive and natural cooling, CLT panels, terracotta tiles, external insulation, and high-performance window suites and glazing.

City Rail Link Pushes New Digital Engineering Boundaries

The City Rail Link (CRL) project is set to be a game-changer for Auckland’s public transport with 3.45km of underground rail tunnels that will more than double the city’s rail capacity.

As part of the Link Alliance, AECOM with our alliance design partners WSP and Tonkin & Taylor is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible using BIM on linear infrastructure. The team has improved efficiency and reduced risk on the project, and at the same time enabled greater visibility of the overall project design.

• Common data environment – the digital engineering team is using a common data environment, to ensure that all 200+ project designers and engineers are working in a single online location with the latest updated designs. The geographically dispersed engineers, across eight different teams, can collaborate and live-share over 50 different models, and simultaneously interrogate and review the current design via a web browser, without any additional software or hardware requirements.
• New design processes – we employed a combination of traditional Building Information Modelling (BIM) processes, as well as some newer parametric design and generative design processes. This reduced tunnel design modelling time from weeks to hours. When designing the cross-passages (short tunnels that connect two parallel tunnels) in the main tunnels, we used a completely parametric design approach.
• The power of parametric design – is our ability to regenerate the model based on design changes in just minutes. In addition, the objects in our parametric approach are designed to address different stages of the project, providing the right level of detail at the right time. A cross-passage is a highly complicated element that must be placed based on the physical arrangement of the precast tunnel segments (rotation, tapering, key segment position, etc). Visual programming and computational design have been critical in performing a theoretical calculation of the Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) ring placement based on an algorithm that aims to minimise the diversion from the design alignment.

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Parametric design or modelling is the creation of a digital model based on a series of pre-programmed rules or algorithms known as ‘parameters’. This means that the model, or elements of it, are generated automatically by internal logic arguments rather than being manually manipulated by engineers and/or modellers.

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• Generative design – we have also deployed generative design within the tunnel design to create the ‘kinematic envelope’. This is the space allocated for the safe passage of the moving trains through the tunnel. Engineers used the modelled kinetic envelope to check that the design met the requirements and ensure that no element would be positioned in a way to obstruct the safe passage of the train. This generative design approach saved a considerable amount of time, by reducing several iterations which normally involve interaction with many different disciplines and technical experts.

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Generative design is an iterative design process that involves a program that will generate a certain number of outputs that meet predetermined constraints.

Within the tunnel design we have also deployed generative design to create the kinematic envelope. The kinematic envelope is the space that must be allocated for the safe passage of the moving trains through the tunnel.

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The project team continues to push new boundaries with the use of digital engineering processes and computational design and is now applying these techniques to other parts of the CRL project to further enhance the design and construction.

About CRL

The CRL is a 3.45km twin-tunnel underground rail link up to 42 metres below Auckland city centre. It includes a redeveloped Mount Eden Station, where the CRL connects with the North Auckland (Western Line) and new underground stations; one mid-town at Wellesley and Victoria Streets provisionally named Aotea, and at Karangahape Road, provisionally named Karangahape.

When open in 2024, CRL will transform the downtown Britomart Transport Centre into a two-way through-station that better connects the Auckland rail network by at least doubling the rail capacity.

 

For more information, please contact:

Cesare Caoduro
Cesare.Caoduro@aecom.com

Big data is big business, and New Zealanders now have access to one of the largest, most sophisticated data centres in the world – right in their own backyard.

Spark’s new NZ$60million Takanini Data Centre includes modular systems and base isolation bearings to maximize its resiliency; while the scalable power and cooling features provide an overall cost saving of approximately 20 percent.

Spark (formerly Telecom) along with Retail Holdings, AECOM and Hawkins Construction, worked closely together to design and build the data centre. AECOM’s designers discovered that base isolation would reduce the seismic loading on the building, meaning reduced foundations and a lighter structure to protect the sensitive IT equipment in the case of an earthquake event.

The team’s open, integrated approach resulted in the delivery of a state-of-the-art base isolated building for less than a traditional piled solution.

The new data centre was officially opened on 31 October, 2014.